Archive for July 2007 (10 posts)

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Have you ever thought about what it might be like to try to walk through all of the shelves at the Library of Congress? Maybe not, but we LOC people love to mull over the sheer magnitude of this place.

You might have seen statistics here or there that have referred to somewhere in the vicinity of 530 miles of shelves at the Library. But our collections keep growing (at the rate of some 10,000 items per day) and, with them, the shelves keep getting longer.

The Library of Congress has begun bringing online new high-density storage modules at Ft. Meade, Md., that continue to add to that total. But an even more recent addition?the subject of this post?has also increased that mileage, bringing our current estimate to a whopping 615 miles of shelves.

So getting back to my original question: If you were to try to walk 615 miles, you could start in Washington, D.C., heading west until you stopped in Chicago. Then you might want to grab a drink of water, because you?ll have to walk another roughly 20 miles west of Chicago until you reach Aurora, Ill., home of the fictional Wayne and Garth of ?Wayne?s World? fame.

Image of the Packard Campus courtesy of the Library of Congress?s Motion Picture, Broadcast and Recorded Sound division

The Library of Congress?s other major, new addition comes in the guise of the Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation. The Packard Campus represents a historic and remarkable gift to the government and the taxpayers, with a private cost by the Packard Humanities Institute to build the facility of more than $150 million. The Congress has generously provided $82.1 million in operations, staffing and other start-up costs. Some 5.7 million items, the vast majority of the Library?s collection of audio-visual materials, will be housed at the Packard Campus in Culpeper, Va., about 75 miles southwest of D.C.

More important than just acquiring and storing the items, the Packard Campus offers an opportunity, unparalleled in the world, to preserve the holdings (most of them digitally) for future generations.

The link to the press release above gives you just a hint of the cutting-edge technologies that will help our experts do just that. (This Washington Post story also does a good job of summing things up.)

So the next time you see a newly restored, resplendent movie on on of those classic film channels, you might just be seeing the loving product of Library of Congress staff, who are preserving America?s unrivaled body of audio-visual creativity.

A mini-debate is breaking out among library-philes in the wake of a Wall Street Journal story about an Arizona library that has ditched the Dewey Decimal System for much broader subject headings, catering to a client謥 who are apparently more browsers than researchers. An earlier article claims it to be the first library to break […]

There has been substantial public interest in a recent decision by a federal court not to forestall a ruling by the Copyright Royalty Judges that increases royalties paid by Internet radio stations, effective this coming Sunday, July 15. (By the way, I?m told ?Copyright Royalty Judges? and is their preferred name, not the ?Copyright Royalty […]

Bill Powers of National Journal has debuted a neat, recurring feature about how ?leading figures in government, politics, and other spheres? get their information from the media. He chose Dr. Billington, the Librarian of Congress, as its first subject because he ?runs America?s first great information outlet.? From the article: I think daily newspapers are […]

(Matt’s note: The Law Library of Congress is using this space to do a couple of ‘guest posts,’ written by Andrew Weber. The following are his words.) In the three years that I have been working at the Law Library of Congress, I have learned that its mission is ‘to provide research and legal information […]

(Matt’s note: The Law Library of Congress is using this space to do a couple of ‘guest posts,’ written by Andrew Weber. The following are his words.) I was discussing with Dr. Bryan Bachner the other day about the presentation he gave on World Intellectual Property Day at a conference held by the Institute for […]

Tomorrow (July 14, 2007) the Law Library of Congress will celebrate its 175th birthday. (You can trace its history here.) Established in 1832, it was the first distinctly created unit of the Library of Congress. We used the Library of Congress?s 207th birthday (an odd number, I know) to launch this blog, so we thought […]

Library Journal covered the third and final public meeting of the LOC-led Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control. The group?s charge is to: * Present findings on how bibliographic control and other descriptive practices can effectively support management of and access to library materials in the evolving information and technology environment * Recommend […]

A partial image of page 1 of the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, with a gradient fade applied A couple of notes about recent TV appearances, and then an on-topic digression (which is after the jump). First of all, as previously mentioned, Dr. Billington, the Librarian of Congress, was the guest July 1 […]

The Fourth is quickly approaching ? very quickly ? and the July edition of the LOC Wise Guide brings us some timely facts about hot dogs. I don?t know about you, but it sure makes me hungry for one of those Hot Texas Wieners ? from New Jersey. Enjoy America?s 231st, everyone!

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